_Dear Anthony_: I am sorry, after the trouble you took ["A lot you
are," he thought] that your priceless pearl will really have to
go. It has been an impossible situation from the first, but I have
loyally tried to carry it through for your sake--you seemed to
care so much about it. I have never liked the girl. She has a sort
of breezy aggressiveness that I can't stand, and Cora Wellington
felt just the same. I did not write you, but that first evening
Cora said to me, "Where is Anthony's judgment--sending you a
girl like that?" I do not like the effect she has had on the
children--taking all the spirit out of poor Durland, and Antonia
appeared dressed for church this morning like a little French doll.
However, when Durland discovered her this afternoon clasped in
the arms of a detestable young man by the name of Williams--Allen
Williams, whom Dolly, poor child, has had spending Sunday, much
against my inclination--I did feel that things had reached a point
when even you would hardly blame me for getting rid of her. I sent
for the girl and told her she must go. I was surprised and, I own,
hurt, Anthony, when she answered that you had extracted a secret
promise from her not to go until you released her.
I hope you see what a disagreeable and humiliating position you
have put me in. I think I should have ignored both her promise
and my own, except that the girl has acquired such a hold over
Durland and Antonia that they go on like little maniacs about the
injustice I am doing her. Dolly and Cora entirely agree with me.
However, I have consented to keep her until I get a telegram from
you releasing us both. I do hope you will immediately send it on
the receipt of this letter.
Wood laid the letter down with a feeling of the most intense surprise.
Allen Williams--a young man unfavorably known to him as an admirer
of the most conspicuous of the year's Broadway beauties--that man
spontaneously interested in a girl like Miss Exeter--a ruthless,
stupid young animal like Williams attracted by that pale, honest,
intellectual, badly dressed girl--without an effort on her part. No,
that was too much to ask him to believe.
He opened Cora's letter. Cora wrote a large, sprawling hand, and her
only rule was never to write upon the next consecutive page, so that
her correspondent went hopelessly turning her letters round and about
to find the end of a sentence. Wood caught "----getting herself kissed
in poor Edna's blameless sitting room in broad daylight, and thus
getting rid of her and an undesirable suitor of Dolly's at one fell----"
He twisted the letter about, trying to find the end of this, but coming
only upon a description of moonlight on the ocean, he tossed it aside
and opened that of the culprit herself.
I regret to say, [it began in vein that struck Wood as none too
serious] that I have caused a scandal. A young man called Williams
tried to kiss me--in fact he did--when I was reading the paper
and didn't even know he was in the house. I should have dealt
with him; but Durland, who saw it all, was so cunning and manly,
and ordered him out of the house. Your sister is naturally annoyed
with both of us and won't believe I was not to blame. She keeps
quoting something you once said to Dolly under circumstances
described as similar--that no man kisses a girl if he knows it's
really against her will. If you did say that, Mr. Wood, you're
wrong. If a man wants to kiss a girl something in his psychology
makes him feel sure she wants him to. But the loathsome creepiness
a girl feels at having a man whom she doesn't like touching her is
something no man can possibly understand.
Williams has behaved technically correctly and actually
horridly--saying sourly enough that it was entirely his fault,
that he alone was to blame, but letting everyone see that he feels
I led him on--only that, of course, a gentleman's lips are sealed.
However, he was instantly shipped back to New York on a slow train
that stops at every station.
As soon as he was gone Mrs. Conway and I had rather a scene.
She wanted me to go at once. I said I could not go without your
permission. She finally agreed to let me wait until you had been
heard from. I need not say I shall do exactly as you wish. It will
not be particularly easy to stay after this, but I will do it if
you wish--or go--just as you telegraph.
Whatever Anthony Wood's faults might be, lack of decision was not
usually one of them. He folded the letters neatly on his table, took
his panama hat from the peg, went to the telegraph office and sent his
sister the following message:
Letters received. Please keep Miss Exeter until my return. Should
be back within two weeks.
And then, rapid decisions being at times dangerously like impulses, he
sent a second one to Miss Exeter herself, which read:
Wish to express my complete confidence in you.
The days before those two messages came were trying ones in the Conway
household, which was now divided into two hostile parties--Pearl,
Durland and Antonia on one hand; Mrs. Conway and Dolly, occasionally
reenforced by Miss Wellington, on the other. Miss Wellington did not
make matters any easier by suggesting to Edna that something similar
must have taken place in the case of Anthony himself--just what you'd
expect from that sort of girl--that hair, that great curved red mouth.
She understood from dear little Dolly that Williams had told her--as
much as a man could tell such a thing--that he could hardly have done
anything else.
What Williams had really said, for few men are as bad as their adoring
women represent them, was that her mother was taking the incident too
seriously.
Pearl could not have borne life if it had not been for her daily
letter, which she continued to write. Mrs. Conway hardly spoke to her;
and if she did, she spoke slowly, enunciating every word carefully as
if Pearl's moral obliquity had somehow made her idiotic. Durland, loyal
to the death, was not much help, because he merely hated his family
and scowled through every meal. Antonia, on the other hand, was one of
those rare natures who could be an ally without being a partisan.
"Of course," she would say calmly to anyone who would listen to her,
"Allen only came here at all in the hope of seeing Miss Exeter, but you
can't expect Dolly to understand that."
Anthony's two telegrams arrived one evening at dinnertime and were
handed by the butler, one to Mrs. Conway and one to the governess.
Pearl's heart sank on seeing there were two. She thought it must mean
he was deciding against her; and though she found her present position
unpleasant, she did not want Mr. Wood to decide against her. She
opened hers and read its few words at one glance. It was not her habit
to blush, but she blushed now with a deep emotion--of gratitude and
admiration. Not many men would have stood by her, she thought, in a
situation like this. She knew where Antonia got her sense of justice.
Or, she thought with something very like jealousy, was it really
Augusta in whom he was expressing his confidence, not in her at all?
Yes, of course, anyone who had once seen Augusta would feel confidence
in her.
The next day she settled back to the routine--lessons with Antonia and
then with Durland--the public beach--a silent luncheon--then sometimes
a little feeble tennis with Antonia; but more often now her mother took
the child out with her, as if Pearl were not a proper person to be
given charge of a pure young child. Left alone, Pearl would take her
book and parasol and retire to the Conway's beach. She seldom read,
for, to be candid, she was not a great reader; but she would sit and
stare at the empty sea--empty at least if the wind were from the south;
but when it turned and blew from the north, then the whole ocean would
be dotted with fishing boats out of Gardiner's Bay; and Pearl, lying
there idly, would watch the rowboats putting out and taking in the
nets. Sometimes Antonia was permitted to be her companion, and then
she read aloud to the child. Antonia was in the stage of development
when she loved poetry, but poetry of a stirring, narrative quality--The
Ballad of East and West, The Revenge, The Burial of Moses. She would
lie with her head in Miss Exeter's lap, gazing up into the unquenchable
blue of the sky, and say "I'm going to learn that one by heart," and
would get as far as the second verse when it was time to go in and
dress. After dinner Pearl and Durland would play Russian bank, which he
had proudly and lovingly taught her; and Dolly and Mrs. Conway would
run over to Miss Wellington's, where they could abuse the governess to
their heart's content.
One night--just between night and day--Pearl woke with an overmastering
sense of dread. She had been dreaming that the sea, a perpendicular
wall miles and miles high, was coming over the dunes. After two or
three days of damp heat the waves had been rising; local weather
prophets were talking about the August twister. Now, as she sat up in
bed, listening and looking into the dark, she became aware that the
wind had risen; the wooden house was creaking and trembling like a ship.
She was frightened, as an animal must be frightened without reason and
out of all proportion. In the medley of little sounds she thought she
detected the sound of something hostile. The pearls--she thought of the
pearls.
It would have been easy to lock her door--no, not easy, for as she sat
rigid in her bed she found the idea of motion terrifying; but she could
have summoned courage to cross the floor and lock the door. Only, Pearl
was afflicted by a sense of responsibility.
She turned on her light--that helped her. She was no longer terrified
like an animal; she was merely frightened like a human being. She got
up, put on her dressing gown and, crossing the hall by a supreme effort
of courage, entered Mrs. Conway's darkened room. Perfectly gentle,
regular breathing greeted her ear. She knew where the switch was and
turned on the light.